As a doctor and scientist another concern engulfs my mind - the impending world chaos not only from COVID-19 but from the relentless climate crisis when government action is sidelined.

Coronavirus infection expands exponentially. In the words of the Director-General of the WHO: "It took 67 days to reach 100,000 coronavirus cases worldwide. The second 100,000 cases took 11 days, and the third 100,000 took only four days."

Many world governments did not recognise the importance of this phenomenon, and the current surge of infections reflects delay in social lockdown, which Wuhan has now delivered effectively after a short local cover-up. Australia understood this lesson and many lives have been saved.

But my concerns for the future also increase exponentially because the rise of greenhouse emissions. The effects of climate change also have exponential characteristics. Like COVID-19, action taken now will save lives, and the longer the delay the more difficult the task. Failure to act decisively on emissions by 2030 confers impossible action by 2050.

Climate change is progressing relentlessly throughout this COVID-19 crisis, and the next bushfire season is only six months away. Many of the victims of this climate change-induced disaster have been forgotten by the government, conveniently so for its own performance and stability.

Internationally, climate change results in at least 300,000 deaths every year, mostly hidden in underdeveloped nations; the deaths in Australia are from bushfires, widespread smoke pollution and from heatstroke. Together these affected in some way 80 per cent of our people. In contrast to many other nations, we have little sign of a national climate change adaptation policy, apart from use of the armed services and the reduction of fuel load.

READ MORE:

The government rightly acts on incomplete science on COVID-19, yet it fails to act on the certainties of climate science. We need less bluster and more science-based action.

An important initiative on climate change, Zali Steggall's climate change bill, was abandoned when Parliament ceased sitting for several months. This was a government abdication of responsibility, even though parliamentary opportunities may arise in short sittings to deal with coronavirus-related economic issues. Of the 227 elected representatives, surely an active group of members capable of understanding science could work to electronically prepare policy options for consideration of all parties when Parliament resumes? Greg Mullins and colleagues of the Emergency Leaders for Climate, together with the Climate Council, might become a key component.

Here is a cause for activism by the media currently engulfed in COVID-19 news.

The coronavirus crisis is an acute public health emergency necessitating drastic action. The climate change crisis is slowly delivering similar economic and social outcomes - but there will be no vaccine. We cannot have governments that cannot chew gum and walk at the same time, and we must give thought to means to involve science and technology into decision-making without political impairment.

To conclude my personal worries, the deferment of organ transplantation due to the COVID-19 crisis was hard for me to accept. Transplantation is one of the great advances in medicine during my lifetime. As a junior doctor in an early transplant team, I can still feel the distress of those patients denied new life, and remember the huge effort and teamwork on the part of doctors, nurses and technologists when it came to bringing each transplant to fruition - not least for the love for humanity shown by the strangers and families who had donated organs.

I shed tears for these patients, as well as for coronavirus patients, and would like those who paraded their rights on the Bondi and St Kilda beaches, and those who dodged their quarantine obligations upon returning from overseas, to be aware of their responsibilities to others.